barn raising
by eponnia
Summary: Rosita, Norman, and their children have long since outgrown their apartment, but they make do. Then he loses his job after the concert in which his wife does not win a hundred thousand dollars, and they go house hunting in Bunnyburrow. [Part 2 of the "you're gonna hear me roar" series. One-shot.]


**AUTHOR'S NOTE: As with all fics in this series,** _ **Sing**_ **is now set in the universe of** _ **Zootopia**_ **. This takes place after both films end.**

 **The series title is from "Roar" by Katy Perry.**

* * *

 _barn raising. noun._

 _a gathering at which people in a community_

 _cooperatively erect the framework of a neighbor's barn,_

 _typically followed by a celebration._

* * *

The concert and everything that goes along with it is rewarding and personally satisfying and the most fun Rosita's had in years-

But there's no prize money.

When she goes to the audition, she consciously doesn't let herself think about the hundred thousand dollars. The pig shows up because she wants to sing again and be more than just Mrs. Norman Hogsen, but she's also a mother of twenty-five children. She'd be lying if she said the money never crossed her mind.

But the prize turns out to be fake. The next few hours following that revelation are concerned more with not drowning, surviving being nearly crushed by a collapsing building, and wrangling her family out of a clothesline she altered in order to abandon her wifely and motherly duties. Once she, Norman, and the children are safe inside the apartment and her husband orders takeout so she can recover from almost dying, Rosita vows never to leave her family again.

Her place is with them, not pursuing her own selfish desires for creative fulfilment.

* * *

But then Buster calls about putting on an unpaid, non-competitive concert.

This time Rosita talks everything over Norman. Only on weekends or when their children are at school does she help rebuild the theatre; never again will she leave machines to run her house or look after her family. Buster and the other musicians understand when she puts her home life first, and her husband's support gets her through long hours building the stage or rehearsing with Gunter. She almost suggests working on the song at the apartment, but there's not enough space and anyway she wants _Shake It Off_ to be a surprise for Norman.

The night of the concert finally arrives, and Norman can't stop staring at her. It's true that the rush of performing for a crowd is as electrifying as she remembers. But as the children swarm their mother and her husband kisses her, she finds she prefers this to standing ovations.

She knows she can be a homemaker and a singer now, but her family will always come first.

* * *

But there's still no one hundred thousand dollars to go home with.

She settles back into her normal routine of cleaning and cooking and doing school runs. Not long after the concert, Nana Noodleman buys the crumbled Moon Theatre, and Buster brings up doing another show when the new theatre is built.

But Rosita won't let music sway her again. She will always love it, but she's a mother first, and her children are her priority. Let other animals juggle careers and parenting at the same time. Rosita sings in the shower and the car and the kitchen, and until her kids are grown and out of the house, that's going to have to be enough for now. She has a built in audience of twenty six, and she shouldn't have gone looking for another.

And then Norman comes home on a Tuesday and announces that the bank let him go.

Rosita puts all the kids in the living room with a movie before she even lets herself think about the reality that they now have no active income. Once the children are occupied, she shuts the door of the living room, hugs Norman, and tries to reassure herself as much as her husband.

* * *

He goes out job hunting the next day.

They have enough in savings not to immediately panic about paying the bills. But feeding twenty seven animals three times a day is expensive in of itself, let alone keeping almost thirty growing piglets clothed, and that doesn't even cover other necessitates like toothpaste and Windex and school supplies.

She has never wished the prize money was real than she does now.

Every day, Norman looks for work. Rosita wishes she could get a job herself to feel like she's doing something, but hiring a sitter is out of the question. All of her focus goes into the children. She stops buying makeup so she can afford twenty five new pencils, and both Rosita and Norman quit drinking coffee in order to buy laundry soap.

She can't relax the first rent day after the concert. They have enough to pay it, but she's on edge the entire day. After Norman heads out for another interview and the kids are on the bus to school, Rosita stands in the middle of the kitchen and cries because she doesn't know how to clean the carpets with a broken vacuum they can't afford to fix.

Her phone rings.

It's Norman in the middle of an interview, saying things like _assistant manager position_ and _brewery_ and _but we'll have to move_. She looks around at the apartment their family hasn't comfortably fit in for years, and that they now can barely afford, and tell him to take it.

* * *

Bunnyburrow doesn't look like the kind of place to have a brewery.

Just over two hundred miles outside of Zootopia, Rosita feels like she's on a different planet. The apartment they are about to officially move out of sums up everything she realizes she doesn't like about the city. Too many animals were crammed into too small of a space. But here in Bunnyburrow, she can finally breathe. Rolling hills stretch as far as the eye can see, animals wave to each other as they drive by, and families as large as hers are everywhere. The small town is peaceful and family friendly and everything the city wasn't.

Having begrudgingly left their children with a sitter in Zootopia, Rosita and Norman tour house after house with their relator, Travis. The pigs are both initially a bit nervous about spending so much time with a ferret, but he proves himself to be a respectful, intelligent, and upstanding rodent. Rosita reminds herself to stop judging other animals - wasn't that part of the reason why the Nighthowler Crisis went on so long? - and as the day goes on, she is honestly impressed by Travis' selections. She's seen the tv show _Den Hunters_ enough times to know the real estate agents always take clients to overly expensive houses, but Travis is respectful of their budget.

The properties he takes them to are the polar opposites of their current place. Bunnyburrow is a community that prepares for large families, and it shows in the square footage and how sturdily the homes are built.

But then Travis brings them to a rambling white farmhouse with an actual picket fence, and when Rosita walks inside, it feels like home.

* * *

Moving in of itself is stressful. Moving while corralling twenty five piglets is nightmare inducing.

But as Rosita is taping up the last box because Casper wanted to keep his action figures out until the actual moving day, there's a knock at the door. It is the Moon Theatre family, as they've all started to call each other – minus Mike, of course, but his absence surprises no one. They offer to help her move, and she tries not to burst into tears all over again.

They load some of their belongings into Johnny's truck, some into Günter's car, and some into Norman and Rosita's van, and still end up having to take multiple trips between the city and Bunnyburrow. But Buster and Ms. Crawley offer to watch the children at the New Moon Theatre, and with the kids out of the way they get everything into the new house by midnight. Meena is the strongest of them all, and probably would be able to move the pig-sized fridge by herself if it didn't stay with the apartment. But Johnny and Ash aren't far behind in terms of muscle, and the gorilla gets the boxes even Norman might struggle with.

Cardboard boxes covering every inch of the farmhouse, Rosita and Norman put their small army to bed and are asleep themselves by two in the morning.

The Moon Theatre family arrives bright and early the next day, and Norman willingly lets Rosita oversee the unpacking. Once they have everything where she wants it, the musicians promise to christen the house with song when the Hogsen family is settled. After a long round of goodbyes, Rosita, Norman, and the kids wave the Moon Theatre family off and try to take in the fact that they live in the country.

* * *

The next day, Rosita is washing dishes when she sees rabbits pouring from the front door of the neighbor's house.

Soon there is a knock on the door, and the parents introduce themselves as Stu and Bonnie Hopps. As hard as she tries, Rosita can't keep the names of their children straight, and realizes this is how other animals feel when meeting her own family. Stu talks about arranging a playdate between the Hopps children in the same range as the Hogsen kids. Then Bonnie gives her a carrot cake, and Rosita realizes she's never gotten a housewarming gift before. None of her neighbors in the city had brought her family anything.

Zootopia was crowded and loud and stressful. Looking back, it was a place to live, not to be a home. But though she's been in Bunnyburrow for two days, it already feels like where Rosita was supposed to be her entire life.

* * *

 **AUTHOR'S NOTE: If you're confused as to why there's a brewery in the wholesome postcard-esque Bunnyburrow... Well, the name Hopps might not be just a reference to the fact that rabbits jump.**

 **I know this was mainly about Rosita and didn't have a ton of Zootopia characters, but that's how it turned out. This was also originally going to be a study of a friendship between Rosita and Bonnie, and I do have another fic idea in mind that will properly detail that. But as this fic turned into what it did, I'm still happy with it. Rosita did so much by herself, and of course was highly capable, but surely raising twenty five kids might get to even her. Everyone needs some help now and then.**

 **I was originally going to have Sharla be the realtor. But if Gideon Grey gets to mature, so does Travis.**


End file.
